Freemasonry: A Very Short Introduction - Andreas Önnerfors 2017

Masonic rites between inclusion, delimitation, and authority
From darkness to light

The sequence of rituals establishes a progressive programme of moral self-improvement. These programmes of prescribed actions or practices of ceremony were eventually standardized under the authority of specific masonic bodies, grand lodges, or orders representing sets of particular ’rites’ or ’systems’. Throughout the history of freemasonry, the authority over this programme of rituals was (and to some extent still is) a disputed issue. The major fault line was established between the first three and all subsequent degrees. Craft masonry claimed authority in form and content only over the first three degrees. When the two rival English grand lodges of ’Antients’ and ’Moderns’ were united in 1813, the Royal Arch degree (principally practised by the ’Antients’) was officially declared a completion of the third degree, whereas in other rites it was clearly seen as a separate fourth degree.

In Britain and by extension in the British colonies and the USA, the authority over the first three degrees rests with territorial grand lodges, with the Royal Arch constituting a borderline case. Other degrees, such as those conferred in Mark Masonry, developed their own organizations. Today, there are around twenty of these so-called ’appendant bodies’ in England and Wales. The situation in the Americas is similar.

The 18th-century proclivity towards opulence in form contributed to a rapid development of different ritual systems. Originally, freemasonry only worked with the first three degrees, but from 1740 onwards, the higher degrees were added as continuations or were practised by separate lodges or orders. During the 1750s, the first successful attempts were launched to organize progressive ritual programmes in coherent organizations. One prominent example is the so-called Strict Observance, which from 1751 onwards united the first three craft, the additional Scottish, and the supreme chivalric Templar degrees into one consecutive system on three separate levels. However, the system was not immune to change and allowed the integration of Templar priesthood degrees with rather esoteric content during the 1770s. After 1782, this threefold division of the degree structure was also introduced to the succeeding system of the Scottish Rectified Rite. Already in 1760, the threefold division was incorporated into the Swedish rite (with its eleven-degree system still existing today). In France, the higher degrees were also organized within the national GODF, thus creating a potential progression from the lowest to the highest degrees. Even the infamous Order of the Bavarian Illuminati was divided into three consecutive levels—however, the names and content of its supreme degrees varied considerably from those of the Templar systems.

The most prominent and widespread coherent system, in terms of membership and global distribution, is the AASR, which organizes thirty-three degrees on several levels. First established in 1801, its history and development in rituals stretches back to the 1760s.

Within freemasonry, there has been a profound division concerning the hierarchy, authority, meaning, and privilege of interpretation in relation to the higher degrees. The criticism of ’nuisance’ of higher degrees culminated between 1780 and 1800, first in the collapse of the Templar system of the Strict Observance (1782) and finally in post-revolutionary conspiracy theories. These theories blamed the higher degrees for representing corrupt and degenerate forms of freemasonry with potentially revolutionary agendas. A strong masonic reform movement emerged and aimed to roll back the influence of higher degrees and their organizations, and to work in the ’pure’ form of craft masonry only. At the same time, systems with integrated degree structures claimed to reveal the true meaning of the craft degrees at higher levels of knowledge. This conflict of hierarchy and interpretation foreshadowed the division between different forms of freemasonry during subsequent centuries, and particularly the division between ’humanitarian’ and ’confessional’ varieties.